Syndicate

Communist Party of Spain

February 10, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — February 6 marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the “Battle of Jarama” during the Spanish Civil War, as left-wing and democratic forces fought to stop the fascist forces of General Franco taking power.

Alongside the Battle of Madrid, the Battle of Jarama is commonly associated with the participation of the International Brigades — volunteers, often organised by Communist parties, who travelled from around the world to Spain to join the anti-fascist fight in defence of the 1931-39 Spanish Republic.

Following Franco’s failure to take Madrid in October-November 1936, the fascist forces attempted a military offensive in February 1937 on the western flank of the Spanish Republic forces, alongside the river Jarama. While the offensive failed, and the counter-offensives by the Republican forces effectively turned the battle into a stalemate, the battle itself became synonymous with the military, political and moral contribution of the International Brigades to the anti-fascist struggle.

Holding the frontline at Jarama were thousands of volunteers from Britain, Ireland, United States, Italy, France, Belgium and many others who came from around the world to defend Spanish democracy against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

Among a handful of surviving International Brigadiers remaining today is José Almudéver Mateu.

Spain's June 26 national elections saw the right-wing Popular Party win 137 seats (up 14 from the December 2015 elections), while the left-wing United We Can coalition won an addition two seats (up to 71), failing to overtake the Spanish Socialist Workers Party as the biggest party on the left.

By Dick Nichols

July 1, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The key question about the result of the June 26 Spanish general election is also the most difficult to answer: why did 1.09 million people, who in the December 20 elections voted for Podemos, the United Left (IU) and the three broader progressive convergences Together We Can (Catalonia), Podemos-Commitment (Valencian Country) and In Tide (Galicia), not vote for the combined Podemos-IU ticket United We Can and these convergences at this poll?

The election saw an increased vote for the ruling People's Party (PP) while the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) held off the seemingly unstoppable charge of United We Can and allies towards supplanting it as the leading force of the left.

The stakes could not be higher. The “second round” election on June 26 could open the door to the final breakdown of the two-party system and the beginning of a deep-going democratisation of the Spanish state and politics: or it could drive all parties defending the status quo into a last-ditch alliance against the forces for radical change.

On January 3, 2015, historian Doug Enaa Greene led a discussion on the history of the POUM and the lessons to be drawn for today. It was presented to the Center of Marxist Education. His talk was based on the text below.

January 7,
2015 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- For
generations of leftists, the most recognizable images of the Spanish Civil War
is from May 1937 comes from George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia of
anarchist and POUMist workers defending the Telephone Exchange in Barcelona
from the Communist Party. This image is said to represent the betrayal of
Spain's libertarian communist revolution by agents of Moscow. In the decades
since May 1937, a great number of polemics have been exchanged on what went
wrong and on many “what ifs” on how the revolution could have won in the
streets of Barcelona.

March 21, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- A number of European left parties have released statements on the developments in Ukraine, Crimea and the region. Unless otherwise stated, they have been translated by Dick Nichols, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal and Green Left Weekly correspondent in Europe. There are statements from Déi Lénk (The Left), Luxemburg; Sortu, the radical left Basque Country party; the Communist Party of France; the Communist Party of Spain; and Gregor Gysi, chair of Germany's Die Linke (The Left). More will be added as they come to hand.

June
21, 2013 – Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal -- It took 76 years and one day since his abduction on
the orders of Stalin during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), but on June 17,
2013, all parties of the Catalan left came together in Barcelona to recognise
the contribution to the Catalan and Spanish working people of revolutionary
fighter Andreu Nin.

At
midnight on June 16, 1937, Nin, the general secretary of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), was abducted
by Stalinist agents outside the POUM’s headquarters. He was then taken to a
secret prison near Madrid, where he was tortured and then murdered once it was
clear he would never “confess” to being in the pay of Hitler. His remains have
still to be discovered.

January 4, 2013 – Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal -- On the last day of the 10th federal convention of the Spain’s United
Left (Izquierda Unida, IU), Juan Peña, young IU organisation secretary for the Castilian town of
Valladolid, summed up his view of the impact of the indignado (15M) movement on the IU, one of the oldest broad left
formations in Europe: “15M brought IU good news and bad news. The good news was
that our programmatic proposals hit the mark, shared by the people who poured
into the streets. The bad news was that the people thought that these proposals
were new, their own.”

“There was much in it that I did not
understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it
immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”[1]

This was George Orwell’s first impression of
revolutionary Barcelona at the end of 1936. In many ways, the phrase, ‘a state
of affairs worth fighting for,’ sums up how an entire generation felt about the
Spanish Civil War. Whether on the left or right, millions were passionately
aroused by the war. Idealistic volunteers from more than fifty countries went
to fight on behalf of the Republic. Hitler and Mussolini helped the Nationalist
side in their fervent crusade to establish a ‘Catholic Spain.’